Relive the 80s with the next iPhone Championship Manager Legends

We love a bit of nostalgia here at Pocket-lint towers, especially when it comes to football. Yeah, the players today are genuine athletes, with Hollywood lifestyles and bank accounts to suit, but can they sport a moustache the size of Ipswich? Can they use an entire can of CFC-loaded hairspray on their shiny, buoyant perms? And have you seen Wayne Rooney's shorts these days? They're like flared trousers in comparison to the spray-on pair used by Kevin Keegan.

There's no doubt about it, 80s football was best. Especially if you don't support Man bloody Utd.

Square Enix and Beautiful Game Studios agree, that's why they've followed up the successful first chapter of their iPhone Championship Manager Legends series - which focused on the 1970s - with a version set a decade later.

Championship Manager 1980s Legends is coming to the App Store later this month for both iPhone and iPod touch. It's also compatible with iPad, but you'll have to expand the screen, and the graphics can look a little blocky.

Like its forebears (including the original iOS Championship Manager), you take control of a team from the era and try to guide them to domestic and European honours, and as there are several different start dates to choose from, the experience can be very different each time. Of course, as English clubs were banned from Europe after the Hysel Stadium disaster in 1985, it'll be interesting to see if the game takes this into account.

Regardless, it'll be great to manage teams before the start of the Premier League, and when Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson actually played the game, rather than talk nonsense about it.

It'll be out soon, and at £1.79, which is about the same as an entire house cost back then probably, is well worth a trip down memory lane.

After all, where else will you see Kenny Dalglish as manager of Liverpool, Wolverhampton Wanders in the top division, and casual violence at football matches? Er...

Mind you, in those days, the violence was on the terraces.

What other era or team would you like to manage in a game? Let us know in the comments below...

Our senior ed of news and features has been a tech and games journalist for more than 27 years, and has been with Pocket-lint for over five. Rik has edited a number of videogame magazines in the past, was deputy editor of Home Cinema Choice, and his TV career included stints as co-presenter of Channel 4's Gamesmaster and Sky One’s Games World.